Japchae Should Be Absurdly Easy to Like

Noodle: Japchae

Source: Kimchi Bistro, 219 Broadway Ave. E., 323-4472.

Price: $9.95

Kimchi Bistro is the only Korean restaurant within the Seattle city limits that I go to (well, return to). And its dolsot bibimbap -- a blisteringly hot stone bowl filled with rice, mixed vegetables, beef, and a fried egg -- is the only dish I eat there. That and a half-dozen panchan are one of my comfort-food meals: warm, healthy, modestly fermented. But last week I branched out and tried the japchae.

Japchae is absurdly easy to like. Not just because it's simply seasoned with sugar, soy, and sesame oil, but because the dish centers around dang myeon, stretchy glassine noodles made out of sweet-potato starch. Dang myeon are noodles as designed by Looney Toons: They're so elastic that you can almost hear the boi-YOINGGG! when your chopsticks pull a tangle away from the rest, and they slurp down as if they're coated in Acme anti-friction coating.

Yet the dish always reminds me that there are some people on this planet who just can't love Korean food. When I used to cook near San Francisco's Korean restaurant strip, one night we all went out for a midnight dinner, and our demented French pastry chef insisted on coming along. Then, when we sat down, she demanded a dish with no chiles. While the rest of us were slathering over the promise of kimchi, spicy pork, and squid covered in chile paste, I sold her on japchae. "It's noodles stir-fried with beef and vegetables," I said. Maryse took one bite of the dish, which was redolent of garlic and black pepper, and pushed it away, wailing, "No, no! Eet ees too spiceee! Eet ees too spiceee!" Not only did that become her epithet, it launched the campaign to push her out of the kitchen.

Kimchi Bistro's japchae, a mass of mixed vegetables with tiny shreds of meat, isn't going to supplant my dolsot bibimbap routine. There's a lot of sugar, and not enough garlic, in the sauce. But it was at least an entertaining diversion.

Anyone have a recommendation for one of the Koreatown North restaurants that makes a good japchae?